Rethinking isolated identity politics and abandoning
apologetic messaging were some of the themes emphasized at this year's Creating
Change conference in Denver, presented by the National Gay and Lesbian Task
Force January 28-February 1.

Workshops and plenaries at the 21st national conference
discussed how to move forward a progressive LGBT movement at a critical time,
against the backdrop of a newly elected African American, LGBT-friendly
president and the sting of several same-sex marriage bans still fresh on the
community's minds.

Many presenters said defeats like Proposition 8 and the
country's economic climate mean more opportunities: for coalition building, and
for rethinking the stale, defensive narratives that have defined LGBT political
battles.

"Quit talking about homophobia," said the
Reverend Deborah Johnson of Inner Light Ministries
during an energetic January 29 plenary
session, urging the community to instead challenge heterosexism and the gender
binary. "Most heterosexuals only know how to deal with the prejudice part.
They oftentimes do not see how they're in the systemic structural
institutionalization of heterosexuality."

In campaigns against same-sex marriage, "nobody talks
about us. It's always about this idea of what it is supposed to mean to be a
man and a woman in this world," she said, adding that discrimination is
not the goal, but rather, a means to uplifting heterosexual relationships. It's
that privilege that allies need to understand.

Having worked in the black and feminist movements, Johnson
said the LGBT movement is comparatively "mealy-mouthed about who we
are." Asking for rights in order to be equal "is backwards. We've got
to show up as equal."

But while Johnson is happily, legally married in the state
of California, she nevertheless "did not join this movement to get
heterosexual privileges. I joined this movement to change the entire discourse
of how humanity is defined."

"Seeking integration in the systems we grew up with ...
does not transform the structural inequality," she said during the same
plenary, entitled, "We Can Get There from Here."

Vaid also
critiqued the defensive approach of some LGBT messages, including the familiar
"born gay" arguments.

"People are always saying, 'Well I've got to be gay. I
can't do anything about it,'" said Vaid, quoting her long-term girlfriend
comedian Kate Clinton, who served as the conference mistress of ceremonies.
"It's not that we've got to be gay. We get to be gay."

Progressive LGBT community members, said Vaid, should not to
be afraid to embrace the nontraditional case for rights.

"I am not for traditional family values," she
said, "because those values have produced incest and abuse and
violence."

In a star-studded "State of the Movement" address
on January 30, Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey specifically addressed
the racist backlash that occurred in the wake of the election, when many people
laid the blame for California's Proposition 8 on African Americans, who make up
just 6 percent of the state's voters.

Scapegoating, she said, "ignores the complexity of the
work we need to do." She asked LGBT people to remember that same-sex
marriage bans are "part of the larger right-wing assault on the
ever-expanding diversity of the U.S."